The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art will present an artist talk by exhibiting artist Herb Parker on Thursday, September 26 at 6:00pm in Room 309 of the Simons Center for the Arts located at 54 St. Philip Street on the College of Charleston campus.

The Halsey Institute kicked off the fall season with exhibitions featuring two internationally recognized artists; Herb Parker and Joseph Burwell. Entitled Herb Parker: Studio Practice and Joseph Burwell: School of the Viking Spaniard Revisited the exhibitions examine the relationship between the studio and the work produced within. College of Charleston sculpture professor Herb Parker and alum Joseph Burwell recreated their studio spaces within the Halsey Institute’s galleries. The exhibitions will be on view at the Halsey Institute until Saturday, October 5, 2013.

Admission to the exhibition and Herb Parker’s artist talk is free. Following the lecture, join us in the Halsey Institute galleries for a chance to meet the artist at a reception sponsored by The Vegetable Bin.

ABOUT HERB PARKER

Herb Parker is a sculptor and possibly South Carolina’s most prominent site-specific landscape artist. The College of Charleston art professor since 1991, a native of Elizabeth City, NC, has participated in over 50 site-specific interactions in the landscape since the early 1980s. Parker has created public works at botanical gardens, a centuries old Japanese temple, urban centers, universities, rural landscapes and museums around the world. In addition to fifteen states, he has worked in Sweden, Japan, Italy, and Canada. 

His South Carolina site works include those at the SC State Museum in Columbia, the Waterfront Park in Charleston, Chandler Creek Elementary School in Greer, and the SC Botanical Garden in Clemson. In 1999, Parker was included in 100 Years/100 Artists: Views of the 20th Century in South Carolina Art at the SC State Museum. His work is also in Threshold: Expressions of Art & Spiritual Life, a SC Arts Commission exhibition of art from the Southeast that has been traveling since 2004. Parker has been represented in two SC Triennials and in exhibitions in more than a dozen states. The former U.S. Marine and Peace Corps volunteer has a BFA and a MFA from East Carolina University in North Carolina and has studied in Italy through the University of Georgia. 

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The stereotypical image of the artist’s studio as a paint-splattered, sparsely furnished garret where the lone artist toils away producing their brilliant works is in much need of re-examination. Many artists’ studios are a far cry from this description, and serve very different functions for their inhabitants. This exhibition examines the relationship between the studio and the work produced within it by two contemporary artists who recreated their studio spaces within the Halsey Institute’s galleries.

Herb Parker is best known for his large-scale, site-specific nature-based installations around the world. Yet, he has an equally interesting body of works created, often, using found objects as a point of departure, and displayed within his studio.

Joseph Burwell’s singular vision offers a world engineered by a network of realms and technologies, meticulously constructed and superimposed. The effect of architecture and space onto the psychology and emotions of the viewer is pivotal to the artist’s work. His drawings on wood are blueprints for modular structures inspired by ancient sacrificial sites, modernist habitats and medieval fortifications. His studio contains elements referencing the structures found in his intricate works.